OCR Text |
Show CARING FOR FRUITS. Annual Waste In Orchards Should Be Prevented. Very great Is tho annual loss in tho wasto of fruits. It is & common thing for farmers to say when wo try to sell them a bill of trees: "The ground is covered with apples now." "I had bushels of cherries that wero never picked." "My plums rotted on the trees by thousands." It Is hero that the wasto is manifested; mani-fested; and wnsto is tho cause ot moat of. our poverty. "Wasto not. want not," is a flno old maxim. It is not always tho Blgn of a good farmer to bo too buBy with corn and wheat and hogs to tako caro of the apples, ap-ples, writes Walter S. Smith lu Indiana In-diana Farmer. Leo McDanlol of my own neighborhood boasted that ho had never hnd a visitation of hog chol era on his farm. Ho raked up the fallen apples ovory morning and whooled them out to tho hogs. Thle was dono ns long ns thoy dropped off prematuroly. After thoy matured many that fell off wero good for uso In Bomo other way; then ho assorted them and gavo his hogs only tho bad ones. ThlB plan worked a doublo advantage ad-vantage First, It regulated the .natural .natur-al processes of digestion nnd nsBlml-latlon nsBlml-latlon In tho swlno. Second, it trans ported millions of Insect eggs away from their field of mlchlof, nnd reduced re-duced tho amount of damage. Thou It kept tho ground clear, so that when tho bettor class of apples began to fall they woro moro easily attended to. Of course, Judgment Is required to know when the fruit will do to pick; and when It will do, picking should begin, be-gin, thus to put an end to tho falling of tho fruit. If there Is a good cushion of grnus for tho applcB to fall on, many of them fall without bruising, and aro fully equal to picked apples. |